Wolcott

I've noticed that too. They are excellent amps but that doesn't mean they don't show up from time to time.

I used them as my reference amp for nearly three years and the excellent thing about them is reliability. Lots of tube amps sound decent, but big tube amps have a bad habit of blowing resistors (or worse) when they fail.

Wolcotts generally refuse to work in one of three ways.

(1) Turn the amp on and an output tube is out of bias range or bad, it refuses to use (only) THAT tube and the LED in front of it does not glow.

(2) Refuses to come out of safety. No sound until you remove the bad input tube.

(3) Has a nasty output tube failure while making loud music, then it blows the fuse. Put in a new fuse, cycle it back on and the bad tube (heater working-glowing or not), the blue light in front of it fails to come on, meaning THAT tube failed.

If the more efficient Soundlab panels had come out sooner, I would have kept mine. It's nice to have something that is user friendly and does not require a screwdriver or meter to keep it perfectly biased. It does it automatically every time you turn it on.

Should have mentioned the obvious. They sound excellent.

I have been watching for Wolcott amps for months and there have not been any since around March. At that time I was not in a position to buy anything. Now that I have purchased something else, a pair will probably show up!!!

Call Hank direct, he will sell you the amps!

Just remember this, Hank is 80 years old, once he dies, your amps are boat anchors if you needs anything.

That being said, they are the only amp than can bring Sound labs to their knees. They are just OK on other speakers!

www.Rayofsound.com

Joe

Hi Ray,

Hank has technicians who can build and service the amps, though I think he's pretty much the R&D department. Many companies survive the retirement of their founder. Also, I have a technician here in New Orleans who can service Wolcott amplifiers - and I'm sure he's not the only one. The only serious potential problem is if the chip on the autobias board dies, and then only if replacement chips are no longer available. To the best of my knowledge the chip is still made, and no doubt Wolcott has a pretty good reserve supply on hand. In a worst-case scenario, the New Orleans technician I mentioned could convert the amplifiers to manual bias.

My grandfather ran his own company and went to work every day until he was nearly 95 years old. I remember one time a year or two before he retired, we were walking along and an attractive young lady walked by. My grandfather noticed her, pivoting slowly on his cane to watch her walk by. He then turned to me and said, "Ah, what I wouldn't give to be seventy-five again!"

Cheers,

Duke